Since the world system emerged in the mid-19th century, the stages of capitalist development have all been initiated by economic crises. But unlike the crises of 1873, 1929 or 1973, that of 2007 did not signal the end of the neoliberal stage, but rather its continuation in more extreme forms. This break in the previous pattern requires us to periodize neoliberalism itself and understand how the cumulative effect of the policies implemented during the ‘vanguard’ and ‘social’ periods prepared the way for the current ‘crisis’ period, by restricting the options available to political and state managerial representatives of capital. By reorganizing political economy in such a way that states respond to short-term demands by key sectors of capital rather than the needs of the system as a whole, neoliberalism has inadvertently undermined the accumulation process, producing permanent ‘states of exception’ as the only means of containing the resulting social crisis.
Methodological Issues in Macro Comparative Research: An Introduction